Jack and Ripper
by Minxy
Summary: Giles at Oxford! Will you read the bloody thing if I tell you SPIKE'S IN IT?
1. Jack and Ripper

Jack and Ripper

by

Minx Trinket

Disclaimer: Giles is Joss's. Oxford is Elizabeth's. Everything else is a little fuzzy. 

Summary: Giles in his Oxford days! A love story with some gratuitous violence and a touch of that patented Minx Trinket Cruelty™.

Rating: R, for sex, drugs, rock & roll, violence, and foul language, all the stuff that makes Fic worth reading.

Spoilers and continuity: You'll have to be familiar with "The Dark Age" for this to make any sense at all. If you're brave enough to read the epilogue (which contains a spoiler for a sequel that I may or may not have time to write), you'll notice that portion takes place after "The Gift." Finally, "Fool for Love" is briefly and vaguely referenced, 'cuz what's a good story without Spike?

Authors' notes: 

First, the various pubs, streets, colleges, and landmarks of Oxford and Avebury (including Flori! See http://binky.paragon.co.uk/encounters/issue7/Red_Lion/Red_Lion.html) mentioned in this story are all real. My descriptions are based on my recollections of those places as they were when I spent a few months at Oxford in the late 1990s. I've done my best to avoid anachronism, but I'm sure I've gotten some of it drastically wrong. Apologies to those who know these places well. 

Second, the song that Mortimer sings to Rupert is "Try to Remember" from _The Fantasticks_ (visit http://www.thefantasticks.com/webpages/home.html for scary Jerry Orbach recording!). If you've seen it, you'll get the reference. If not, well…. The Joel Grey connection (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0113026) is purely a coincidence. No, really! 

Just for the record, I wrote the bit about Mickey long before I read _Fray_. Dammit, Joss steals all my good ideas. ;)

Finally, you can go ahead and call this a Mary Sue story, but you should reserve that judgment til the end, for there will be no saving of the Enterprise on Minxy's watch. I promise you that. And I won't be responsible for what happens to your liver if you make Jack mad.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Aethyl and her Throbbing Hobbit for creating a Big Bad for me. Guess I'm just too Little and Good for that sort of thing. 

____________________________________

_Oxford, Trinity Term, 1979_

                  Ripper liked The Trout Inn in the spring. He liked taking the stroll through the idyllic Port Meadow, along the Oxford Canal, to Wolvercote village at sunset. He liked sitting at the tables outside the pub and listening to the gurgle of water over the lock as he tried to annihilate certain bits of his brain with a variety of drinks. He enjoyed the drunken stumble back to town, in the starlit dark, singing loudly to himself and frightening the swans. There was a time, before the dark days in London, when he'd come out to this old pub, with its roaring fires, rough stone walls, and ancient slate roof, along with mates or a date. But since returning to college last autumn he'd found himself becoming more and more the solitary sort. He was not terribly keen on people anymore, and preferred the company of Tennant's and the cool wet breezes of Oxfordshire in May. The Trout was ideal for this purpose, because it was a peaceful sorting-out kind of place, an "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" kind of place, where a solitary drinker was a thing respected and understood. It was the sort of pub where nothing nasty ever happened unless, he supposed, you wanted it to. 

                  Tonight, however, far from feeling soothed by the atmosphere, Ripper's skin felt too tight, and those same feathery breezes seemed intrusive, grating. As he sat, smoking ponderously and gazing across the canal to the blackening trees and the ragged red shreds of sunset, he bounced one heel nervously, fitfully against the ground. Ripper had recently decided not to believe in fate, premonitions, magic(k), or any of the other supernatural twaddle he had been raised on. Therefore, he was busily trying to convince himself that the strange, creeping anticipation that had been pestering him all day, the sensation now spidering its way under his collar, was nothing more than too much work and not enough lager. It was the artifact of an over-burdened mind, he decided. And, he told himself firmly, it has nothing whatever to do with those slowly approaching footsteps, or the voice he was oddly certain would follow them.

                  "Well now, Ripper, what's got your pants in a twist?"

                  He turned toward the redhead with the broad Northern drawl who was standing behind him and said, "Hullo, Jack."

                  Jacqueline MacGonnagal, her violent red curls aflame in the glow of sunset, tilted her head coquettishly at him. "Gi's a fag?" she asked, and he dutifully slid one of his Gauloises from its pack and lit it for her. She took it and inhaled gratefully, then exhaled out of one corner of her mouth. "Ta," she said, and slid onto the bench beside him, leaning back with her elbows on the table. She regarded him curiously.

                  Now, as far as Ripper was concerned, Jack was easily the most fuckable girl at Balliol. He'd spotted her the first day of Michaelmas Term, crossing the quadrangle with two armfuls of books, and he swooped to her aid, though she seemed not to need it in the least. He remembered that she was wearing a cream-colored dress that day, with little blue flowers on it. The dress was thin, perhaps too thin for Oxford in October, but it was a warm day by Durham standards and Jack was reveling in the sunshine. Ripper reveled in what he could see through the dress, which included not a stitch of underclothes. By the time he'd gotten her to her rooms he'd discovered that she was a first year, was reading Classics, and had the uncanny ability to make his blood pound with a single flutter of her eyelashes. He'd thought things were going rather well, until he'd told her his real name, at which she'd grown slightly but noticeably frosty and had made her excuses not to go to The Turf with him that night. To this day, he wasn't sure if his reputation had preceded him or if she simply detested the name "Rupert." Either way, their acquaintance had been nodding at best all year.

                  Why she had chosen, in her braless splendor, to approach him tonight was a mystery he cared not to examine, lest some faerie spell be broken and she disappear like so much smoke. Instead, looking slyly at her through the long hair that fell in his eyes, the gothic remnants of a grown-out mohawk, he grinned and said, "My pleasure."

                  "Lovely night."

                  "Yeah."

                  "You here alone then?"

                  "Yeah."

                  She contemplated this answer, chewing on her bottom lip. Ripper let his eyes wander over her body, not caring if she noticed (thinking, in fact, that it might be to his advantage to be obvious at this point). She wore old sandals, tatty dungarees, and a top that seemed to be made of leftover bits of other tops. It had a very low neckline, and Ripper noticed the simple gold cross that was hanging from a fine chain and nestled between her lightly freckled breasts. Upon seeing it, he had two reactions. The first was surprise, and perhaps a touch of disappointment, that Jack MacGonnagal might turn out to be the churchy sort. The other was: _lucky cross_.

                  "Buy's a drink then?" she asked sweetly.

                  "What're you having?"

                  She pointed at his glass. "What's that?"

                  "That's a pint."

                  "I know that, you sod," she laughed. "I mean, what sort of lager is it?"

                  "Tennant's."

                  "Sounds lovely."

                  "Shall I get you one?"

                  "Please."

                  Ripper hurried to the bar, ordered a pint for her and another for himself, and hurried back, but tried to look cool about it. Much to his surprise, Jack was still there when he returned. She was squinting into the trees across the canal and seemed distracted when he handed her the drink, but eventually she shook herself and thanked him brightly. As he settled himself beside her again, he watched her take a tentative sip, wince, shudder, and put the pint down.

                  "Is it all right?"

                  "'Course."

                  "Didn't look like you enjoyed that."

                  Jack pursed her lips, looking a bit caught out. "Well," she admitted, "I'm not used to lager is all."

                  "I see. More the scotch sort are you?"

                  "No," she giggled. "I'm not much for drinking, usually."

                  He blinked. "You're at Oxford and you're not much for drinking? Rather like going to Antarctica when you're not much for penguins." Jack laughed harder at that than the joke deserved, which Ripper found quite gratifying. "What're you doing here, then?" he asked her.

                  She looked demurely at him from beneath lowered lashes. "Thought I might find you here."

                  _Oh, I am in_, Ripper thought, but he pushed his hand through his hair casually and reached for another smoke. "Well, you found me," he said. "What did you want me for?"

                  She shrugged. "Thought we could get in a bit of trouble together."

                  He resisted the urge to pinch himself. "What'd you have in mind?"

                  "Dunno," she said, and lifted a dainty, short-nailed finger to his chest. She drew a finger down a crease in his shirt. "Thing is, I'm a bit of a novice at being naughty."

                  "I should say. You don't drink---"

                  "Don't smoke either," she smiled, and brought the nearly finished cigarette to her lips. She inhaled before continuing. "That's why I was looking for you. I hear you're our man for wicked."

                  "Well, then," Ripper said, grinning wolfishly, "Go on and tell me what else you don't do."

                  After a fairly spectacular bit of snogging right there at the pub, Ripper decided that the necessary thing was to get her back to college and get her clothing off as quickly as possible. This entailed the maddeningly long trek back through the empty, darkened meadows, which Jack made considerably more bearable by continuing the foreplay as they walked. Her little hands moved furiously over his body, and her hops-flavored mouth, full of giggles and nips, hovered over his incessantly, the combination of which made it delightfully difficult to walk a straight line. Finally he thought, _Horizontal be damned_, and he swept her up in his arms and pinned her to a mossy oak tree with his body. She squealed with delight and wrapped her legs around his hips. There were a number of strings and ties holding her shirt together, and Ripper yanked at them, silently cursing the Girl Guides for teaching the young women of Britain to tie knots so well. Jack's breath was warm in his ear: "Yes, oh my, yes…oh, y---no, wait. Get off!"

                  "What?"

                  "_Off!_" she shouted, and knocked him to the ground. Ripper caught a flash of her leaping over him toward a dark figure that had suddenly reared up from the foliage behind them. Jack tackled the figure, and they went sprawling, two tangled shadows now, into the meadow grass. There was a horrid snarling sound, and a shriek, and a squishy thud, and one of the shadows dissipated into dust.

                  Jack scrambled out of the grass toward him. "You all right?" she panted.

                  Ripper reared away from her. "Fucking hell!" he shouted.

                  "Ripper---"

                  "_You're the Slayer!_" he hollered, stabbing one accusing finger toward her. "You're _Dad's fucking Slayer!_"

                  Grinning sheepishly, Jack said, "Aye. That I am."

                  It was shortly after noon, and Ripper had just managed to fight off enough of a searing headache to avail himself of Ali's Kabob Van up the High when Jack caught up with him.

                  "Ripper---" she began.

                  "Fuck off," he said, and stomped off with his skewer of roast beast. 

                  A few hours later, she cornered him in the Useless Dead Languages section downstairs at Blackwell's.

                  "Gi's a minute to explain?" she asked.

                  "No," he replied, and squeezed between her and a bookshelf to make his escape.

                  He dodged her successfully the rest of the day, had dinner with Charlie down the hall, and listened half-heartedly to the bassoonist's complaints about his new tutor, one Sergei Vladimir Rossnikov, late of somewhere east of the Iron Curtain and now conductor of the University Symphony. 

                  "It's like playing for Henry Bloody Hill!"

                  "Harold," Ripper corrected.

                  "Right, 'Harold' then! Comrade Harold won't let us have the bloody sheet music for the piece we're supposed to be learning for concert. Wants us to practice our scales and runs and bloody 'meditate' on it. Load of bollocks."

                  "You can't get it elsewhere?"

                  "Nah," Charlie sighed. "It's his own work. Never been published."

                  Ripper shrugged. "Nick it from his office, then."

                  "I've half a mind to," Charlie declared, setting down his glass with a thud and splashing its contents onto his red shirt.

                  Most of the next day was Jackless as well, due largely to the fact that Ripper made a few forays to lecture, where no one would think to look for him. She caught up with him in the early evening, when he'd settled down for dinner in a dim corner of the ancient, narrow, and cavernous Turf Tavern. She snuck up behind him and darted into his lap, nabbing a chip from his hand and tightening her legs around his waist, effectively pinning him to the rickety old chair. She nibbled delicately at the chip.

                  "That was the last one," Ripper scowled.

                  "Needs salt," Jack said, and finished it off.

                  "Done now?" he asked sourly.

                  "Not hardly. You going to listen?"

                  "No, I'm not," he said, "and you can tell my father to bloody sod off."

                  "Ripper, your father never sent us."

                  "Bollocks."

                  "Honest!"

                  "So, you hunted me down at the Trout, bloody _threw yourself_ at me---"

                  "You were a pretty easy target to hit."

                  "---and it had _nothing at all_ to do with you being---" Ripper caught himself and lowered his voice to a whisper "---you being the Slayer and me being a defector from the Council?"

                  "Well," she said, "I wouldn't say _nothing_…"

                  "Right," he said. "Get off me."

                  "…but I'm not here on some assignment for the Council geezers, Rip. Swear on me life."

                  "Then what are you after?"

                  She smiled lazily. "I told you. Bit o'fun."

                  "With me."

                  "Why not?"

                  Ripper folded his arms across his chest. "Shall I alphabetize?"

                  She put her arms around his neck. "Nah. Better things to do with the time."

                  He couldn't bring himself to knock her arms away. Her face was coming closer, the tip of her freckled nose nearly brushing his. The heat from her skin was maddening. He found his hands, entirely of their own will, sliding up her back. He raised his hips against her. His whole body was in rebellion against him, but his mouth was still, barely, under his control. Lips caressing her soft cheek, he whispered, "I'd no idea."

                  "Of what?" she purred.

                  "I'd no idea that part of a Slayer's duties was to be the Council's whore."

                  Jack's head snapped back, her eyes blazed with fury, and she raised her fist to strike him. Ripper didn't know all that much about Slayers, but he knew of their superhuman strength, and it was suddenly clear to him that her punch could snap his neck like a twig. She must have realized it too, because she hesitated, and then lowered her arm.

                  She slid from his lap, stood back, and glared at him, hands still balled into fists. "For your information, _Rupert_, I was forbidden to have anything to do with you. But I liked you. And I thought you'd understand what it's like to…." She stopped, then threw up her hands. "Guess I was wrong. We'll just forget the lot then." She turned and darted out of the pub.

                  Ripper sat rooted to his chair for a moment. Then he swore under his breath and followed her outside. She was not out in the garden, among the benches full of tipsy students singing loudly in Welsh, and he turned into the narrow, crooked alleyway leading to New College Lane, calling her. "Jack, wait a sec! I'm sorry, all right?"

                  Jack came hurtling through the air toward him. When she landed with an "_Oof!_" at his feet, he saw that she'd produced a long dagger from somewhere, and both the knife and her hand were covered in a chunky, purplish goo. He heard an inhuman keening sound from around the corner, and he looked up. 

                  The beast that staggered toward him was eight feet tall, covered in patchy mats of gray fur, and oozing from a puncture wound dead in the middle of its chest. Its three yellow eyes rotated and fixed on him for a ghastly moment, then turned back to Jack. She was scrambling to her feet. The thing wailed again, and Jack dove at it. She knocked it down and straddled the purple-gray mess of its torso, punching it hard and fast in the middle eye, over and over and over. It thrashed beneath her, trapped but not weakened. Ripper thought furiously. He knew the thing. He'd seen it somewhere. In a book. It was…it was….

                  "_Obalanga!_" he hollered. "It's an Obalanga!"

                  "Brilliant!" Jack snapped. "How do I kill it?"

                  "Back of it's head! There's a…a tail thingy. It's part of his brain. You've got to---"

                  Jack lurched forward, the beast shuddered, and Jack turned to Ripper, a sinuous red appendage writhing in her hand, listlessly spewing the purple gunk.

                  "---cut it off," Ripper finished lamely. Jack threw the thing away with a grimace. Then she stood, looked at her dagger and her hands, and began wiping them on her skirt. In the distance, Ripper could still hear the undergraduates singing, oblivious to the fray. Jack slid the dagger into her waistband. Then she shook her hair out of her eyes and, grudgingly, smiled at him.

                  Ten minutes later they were in her rooms, shedding clothing like frenzied animals. Somewhere, the rational bits of Ripper's mind were still churning. "Roommate?" he panted.

                  "Haven't got one," she muttered, licking his shoulder.

                  Of course not, Ripper realized, his mouth forging a frenetic path down her belly. His father would have arranged private rooms for her, even though she was a first year. Jack's body was smooth and hard, her flesh salted with exertion. As she threw him onto the bed, he considered that his father could probably bring the whole bloody University to heel with a crook of his little finger. Ripper grabbed Jack's hair and pulled her head roughly backward, exposing her long, cool throat. She moaned as he brushed his lips along it. _Bloody hell_, Ripper thought. _He could probably tell the Queen which hat to wear to Ascot if he took a mind to, authoritarian bastard._

                  Then Jack did something else, and Ripper didn't think about anything for a long time.

                  In the morning the walls fell down.

                  Or so it seemed to Ripper as he was jolted out of his blissful, exhausted sleep. He sat up, flailing, only to find his left arm pinned to the bed and his right arm coming up hard against another barrier. "What the f---" he muttered. Jack bolted upright.

                  "Crap!" she said, and sprang, gloriously naked, out of bed.

                  The noise of demolition began again, an insistent pounding, this time attended by a muffled yet alarmingly familiar voice shouting, "Jacqueline! Jacqueline, wake up!"

                  Jack was muttering curses in what seemed to be several proto-British languages as she collected scraps of clothing from the floor. She growled in frustration, unable to find anything that wasn't covered in sweat, purplish slime, or other unwanted fluids. Finally, she ran to the closet.

                  "Jacqueline, are you there?"

                  "Yes, Mr. Giles!" she called back. "Just a mo'! I'm not decent!"

                  "Mr. Giles?" Ripper asked blearily. He wondered why the wall was on the wrong side of his bed and why Jack was calling him that.

                  There was an ominous pause from outside the door. "Jacqueline, are you not alone?"

                  "Fuck," she whispered, squirming into a sundress and, as usual, not bothering with knickers. She added loudly, "Hang on, sir! I'll be done in just a---"

                  The door burst open. Ripper yelped. His father was standing in the threshold.

                  Mortimer Giles stared blankly at his son. The old man (who was, in fact, barely 50, but whom Ripper had always accorded an age and status somewhat akin to Elijah) was cloaked in well-tailored Burberry. In his left hand, he clenched a smart pair of black leather gloves. From behind his half-moon spectacles, his motionless eyes surveyed the room, took notes, made analyses, wrote up the report, and presented it to the Council elders with recommendations for action, all in the space of a breath. Then he looked at Jack.

                  "Are you quite ready?" he asked.

                  "Yes, sir," Jack replied promptly, stepping into her sandals and swinging a small rucksack onto her shoulder.

                  "Well, then, after you." The Watcher gestured toward the door, and the Slayer obediently departed. Then they were gone, and the door was closed.

                  Ripper blinked.

                  "That didn't happen," Ripper told the walls. "I'm still asleep." He burrowed deep into the blankets and stuffed his head beneath the pillows.

                  The door opened again.

                  "And Rupert," said Mortimer, "your mother and I will expect you for dinner on Sunday." 

                  The door closed.

                  "Bugger," Ripper said.

                  Jack sat in the back of the car and pretended to be deeply engrossed in chalk horse spotting as they wended their way through the Wiltshire hills. Mortimer Giles, seated beside her, allowed her this pretense for the moment and gazed stolidly out the windshield at the road ahead. Kestrels were circling overhead, black shadows against the deep blue morning sky. Jack rolled the window down and stuck her head out into the breeze. Her curls whipped wildly around her head. Her eyes fluttered closed, and her lips parted, smiling, in the sensual pleasure of wind and warmth.

                  But soon the truncated cone of Sillbury Hill loomed before them, and then the sentinel stones of The Avenue, and Jack, pulling her head back inside the car and smoothing her hair out of her eyes, returned to her usual, poker-faced self. The Bentley eased along the narrow road between barbed-wire fences. They crossed the outer mound of earth that ringed the little village of Avebury, drove past the scattered megaliths that stood in the tattered suggestion of a ring, and turned into the parking lot of the Red Lion Inn.

                  Mortimer offered Jack a hand out of the car, and she accepted, her hand cold and stiff in his own. She pulled her hand away the moment she was on her own feet and strode toward the half-timbered pub that stood, nonchalantly, like a boy waiting for a bus, in the midst of the largest stone circle in Britain. Jack was silent and, to anyone but Mortimer Giles, unreadable.

                  They entered the dim establishment and Mortimer, nodding briskly to the gentleman behind the bar, headed directly for the stairs to the upper floor. Jack took a slight detour, only to give a friendly pat to the lip of the incongruous old stone well in one corner of the room. "'Lo, Flori," she said to it, and grinned at the gurgling noise from its depths. Noting her Watcher's disapproving stare ("Please do not fraternize with the ghost, Jacqueline"), she ducked her head sheepishly and joined him on the staircase. They went up.

                  Once settled into his office, which was secreted down at the end of a corridor, Mortimer and his Slayer went through their usual ritual: he offered tea, she refused, and he dismissed his assistant Quentin and eased into the heavy leather chair behind his desk. Jack looked impassively into his eyes. 

                  "Well," Mortimer said. "Report?"

                  "This week, six vampires, an Obalanga, and I finally caught that mummy smashing things up at the Ashmol," Jack replied promptly. "The Obalanga was in the middle of town. Should prob'ly look into that."

                  "Have you ever encountered an Obalanga before, Jacqueline?" Mortimer asked.

                  "No, sir."

                  "Then how did you come to know its name?"

                  Jack's eyes never wavered, but she said nothing.

                  "My son, perhaps, recognized it."

                  "He did," she responded stonily.

                  "Did you…." Mortimer began, then cleared his throat. "When did you begin inviting my son on your patrols?"

                  "I wasn't on patrol at the time," Jack replied calmly. "It was a chance encounter outside a pub."

                  "And you were in that pub in order to…?"

                  "Eat dinner."

                  "I see. With my son?"

                  Again, the Slayer responded with flinty silence.

                  "Jacqueline, we have discussed this. It was a condition of your going to university at all. My son is violent, dangerous, and unstable. You were not to interact with him."

                  "Yes, sir."

                  "And yet the term 'interaction' hardly begins to describe the situation." Mortimer leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk and steepling his fingers beneath his chin.

                  Finally, Jack blinked. She looked away, gnawing at a hangnail. Mortimer sighed.

                  "I trust it will not happen again," he said dismissively. "They're waiting for you downstairs."

                  Jack snatched up her bag and headed for the narrow, spiral iron staircase in the corner of the Watcher's office, which led to the depths of the Council's headquarters, deep below the sacred circle.

                  "By the way," Mortimer added, and Jack paused at the top of the stairs. "We've had intelligence on your friend William. He's been spotted in Warsaw. He shouldn't be bothering you for a while."

                  Jack's eyes narrowed. "Good," she said, and stomped down the steps.

                  Mortimer waited for her to leave before pressing the intercom buzzer on the corner of his desk. Quentin Travers appeared promptly before him. "Sir?"

                  "I'll need information on the Obalanga, their habitat, rituals, mating patterns and such. Anything you can find."

                  "Certainly, sir." Travers turned sharply to go, then turned back, raising a finger. "Um, if I may ask, sir…?"

                  Mortimer Giles raised his eyebrows.

                  "The Situation?" Travers inquired.

                  "All going according to plan, thank you Travers," he replied, smiling pleasantly.

                  Travers pursed his lips in disapproval. "Yes, sir," he said, and marched briskly from the room.

                  Ripper, not bothering to stifle his yawns, trudged back to his rooms, trudged around in search of his bathrobe, and, once suitably attired, headed down the hallway toward the bath, trudging. He could have made the journey with his eyes closed, and indeed would have had he not trudged, barefooted, into a puddle of something cold and sticky in his path. His eyes creaked open and he muttered, "Bloody…" before looking down at his foot and realizing that it was, in fact, just that.

                  An enormous, red-black pool of blood was seeping out from beneath Charlie's door, congealing on the carpet. Ripper stared at it, uncomprehending, for the space of a breath. Then he pounded furiously on Charlie's door, shouting. The door gave, and Ripper stumbled into Charlie's room, while other sleepy heads popped out of doorways to see what was the commotion.

                  The blood was everywhere, smeared across the floor, up the walls, over the furniture and books, sometimes in watery pink streaks, sometimes in black globs. Ripper stood in the midst of the carnage, looking from one gore-stained corner of the room to another, trying and failing to process what he was seeing. It was an American horror film. It was a slaughterhouse. It was an explosion of tomatoes. It was a bad joke.

                  Ripper heard his name called, and someone else poked his head into the room to ask a question. The head retreated immediately with a curse and the sound of retching.

                  Where was Charlie? Ripper stumbled around  the room, frantic, searching. There was blood and blood and blood but no body. Where was the body? Then Ripper saw tiny white fragments embedded in the chunks of viscera, like pieces of a shattered teacup, of an entire shattered teacup factory, and he understood.

                  Charlie was everywhere….

                  Ripper saw Jack when she was still quite far off, before she had even crossed the Broad. It was like seeing her underwater, through the thick and elderly glass of his windows, with the bright sun angling down the street and dappling the panes with hot white blind spots. She darted her way through the crowds, treading swiftly, head up, eyes moving. At the corner she glanced up, squinted, and saw him. She grinned a ragged, tired grin and waved. He raised a hand in reply. With the barest of glances for oncoming traffic, she bounded halfway across the street, pausing on the Martyr's cross for a passing motorbike. She smiled up at him again, and then must have caught the sorrow on his face, submerged in ancient glass and time-honored decorum though it was. She froze for a moment, smile and all, and then seemed to recoil, to take a half-step backward, to shrink. But it was only for a second, and then some movement below must have caught her eye, for she noticed the bobbies milling near the gate. Her face hardened into a dutiful mask, and she moved forward again, her steps harder, determined, mechanical. Jack reached the building and he watched her disappear under the arch.

                  "Where've you been?" Ripper asked. It was not what he'd meant to ask. It was the last thing, he knew, that he should have asked, but he asked it anyway, not moving from his perch on the corner of his bed. Jack sighed. She slumped against his doorframe.

                  "I was at work," she said sourly. She held up a rubber glove. It was smeared with blood, presumably Charlie's. She tossed it in his rubbish bin. Her eyes followed its path and stayed there. There was a furrow between her eyebrows. Her whole body, in fact, seemed drawn down, heavy. Her skin was gray. 

                  "Do you know what it was?" he asked.

                  Jack shook her head slowly and sank down the wall. She hugged her knees to her chest.

                  "Charlie was a good sort," Ripper sighed. 

                  Jack didn't answer.

                  "Used to play 'Proud Mary' on that bloody bassoon," he chuckled, but it felt hollow. He added quietly, "I've seen a lot of people die these past two years. My friends, some of them. They all died horrid deaths. All of them. But this...." Ripper shuddered. "Does it ever get easier, seeing things like that?"

                  "Let's go to London," Jack said.

                  "Pardon?"

                  "We should go to London tonight."

                  He frowned. "For what?"

                  "I want to go dancing."

                  Ripper gaped at her.

                  "I used to love dancing," she continued dreamily. "Haven't been in... I dunno how long. Let's go tonight."

                  "Tonight?" Ripper asked, incredulous. "You want to fucking dance _tonight_?"

                  "No, better yet," she said, "let's hitch a lift down to Cornwall. We can be there by dawn, sit on a cliff and watch the sun rise. That'd be lovely."

                  "Have you fucking gone _mad_?" Ripper shouted. He gestured wildly in the direction of Charlie's room. "My friend _died_ today!"

                  "People die, Ripper!" she hollered back. "That's what they do! That's _all_ they fucking do, all the fucking time! The _whole bloody planet's _just a waiting room for a morgue. Forgive me if I wanted to stop thinking about that fact for _fifteen fucking minutes!_" Then she groaned and buried her face in her hands.

                  Ripper slithered to the floor. On hands and knees, he crawled the few feet to where Jack sat huddled. He touched her knee. She twitched away. He inched toward her, slid one leg under the pyramid of her own, put his arms around her. She stiffened, then dropped her head against his shoulder with a sigh.

                  "We'll go to the pub," Ripper said softly, and kissed the top of her head. "Head of the River. Get a couple of pints in us, then we'll rent a punt, head downriver, yeah? If you want we can bloody float down to London."

                  Jack let out a sharp little laugh.

                  "All right?" he asked. The long shadows of the window panes cast prison bars across their tangled bodies.

                  "Yeah, all right," she sighed.

                  Jack really _wasn't _used to drinking. Ripper realized this when, having barely consumed a pint and a half, she curled up in the middle of the punt with her head on a life vest and began snoring. It was another of those glorious, poetic nights. The moon was full, and they were far enough out from town to see the stars. Crickets were singing. He imagined, for a moment, that the girl in the bottom of the boat was a naiad, drawn from the river by a silver net. Just looking at her made him ache.

                  He steered the boat awkwardly into a cove, where they would be hidden from those coming upriver by a grove of weeping willows, whose long branches dipped into the water like fingers trailing the surface. He threw a rope around a tree trunk and secured the boat loosely. It tried lazily to swing back into the tide, then settled, bobbing at the end of its rope. Ripper clambered over the seats and nestled himself beside Jack, his head propped up on one hand, his other hand taking a single curl from the nest on her head and untwirling it gently, like a spring. Jack stirred and stretched a little, regarded him with one reluctantly opened eye, and smiled. She settled on her back, and Ripper found himself curling up beside her with his head on her stomach.

                  She'd changed into cutoffs and a peasant blouse before they'd gone out, and when she stretched the blouse rode up, so now Ripper's cheek was pressed to warm, freckly flesh. Her fingers were combing gently through his hair. He could feel her breathing. From this angle, looking along her torso to her chin, he could see the scars that he had only felt last night (_Good lord_, he thought, _was it only last night?_), paler ridges against her pale skin. There was a long scar that began below her ribcage on her left side and disappeared beneath her shirt. There were some sort of scratch marks, three parallel lines, under her jaw. She looked like the daughter of War. A fury gripped him. He saw himself slaying whatever did these things to her. He saw himself slaying his father. 

                  Jack lifted her head a little to peer at him. "You're wondering how I got those."

                  "I know how you got them," he said bitterly.

                  "The stories, I mean," she said. He didn't reply. "I'll tell you if you like."

                  Ripper let his hands drift carefully over the marks. They traced the line along her ribs. "Raptor demon," she said simply. They found a healed gash near her navel. "Zombies," she confirmed. Along her left side there was a shallow divot, like a puncture wound. "Ah," she said, "that. That was a rough one. Vampires."

                  "A gang?"

                  "Just two," she sighed. "There's this bit of rough trade fancies himself a Slayer killer. Him and his mad tart of a girlfriend threw me off Carfax tower. Landed on a post box. That one actually put me in hospital. 'Course, it was more a wound to me pride than anything else."

                  Ripper shook his head. "I can hardly believe that."

                  "It's true," she said. "Bastard killed me predecessor. Would've liked to return that favor."

                  Her eyes drifted closed again. Story time, it seemed, was over. Ripper had heard quite enough. The decision came to him suddenly.

                  "Jack," he whispered.

                  "Mmmmm?"

                  "I think you're right. I think we should get out of here. Not to Cornwall, though. Let's go to America."

                  "Hmmmm?"

                  "California. What do you say?"

                  "Hmmmm."

                  He kissed her navel. _Yes, California,_ he thought. _Lovely, sunny, peaceful California._ He would get her away from the Council and all this madness. They could settle down. He could be a grocer after all, and if that didn't work out, a rock star. They could live on a vineyard, raise puppies, have babies. Ripper thought he would like a daughter, with her mother's heart-shaped face and lovely hazel eyes. With her mother's strength. He would let Jack sleep here tonight, under the stars and the willows, and in the morning, he decided, they would go to California, where the demons wouldn't dare follow.

                  But in the morning, two more students were dead.

                  Ripper took the train into London on Sunday, pulling into Paddington at half four. He decided to pass on the Tube and walk to his parents' place instead. He sauntered up Marylebone Road and took a detour through Regent's Park. He wandered its leafy paths for a while. The trees were all in bright green bloom. He was miserable.

                  Slouching onto a bench, Ripper watched a flock of starlings pass overhead and sighed.

                  "I never wanted to be a Watcher!" he shouted at them.

                  The past three days had been wretched, and the worst part was that he wasn't sure what he'd done wrong. He knew why his father (_sodding bastard_) was mad at him, but he couldn't fathom what was upsetting Jack, or why, though she was barely speaking to him, she still wanted to shag every ten minutes or so. They had been trying all this time to narrow down the identity of the creature that was liquefying Balliol students but had had no success. Jack was searching under every stone in the city, and Ripper was trying to help the only way he knew how: research. Jack uncovered nothing. What little Ripper had turned up (accounts of similar deaths in the Ukraine but no information as to their cause) seemed to irritate Jack more than anything else. She would come in from patrol and tell him to shut up and would throw him onto the bed and somehow, Ripper felt, this should have been wonderful but it wasn't, because when it was over, every time, she seemed a little sadder, a little further away than before.

                  He arrived at his parents' townhome and rang the doorbell with resignation. His mother answered, head tilted in quiet sympathy for her baby boy. He wondered what his father had told her.

                  "Rupert," she sighed, and kissed him on the cheek.

                  "Hullo, Mum," Ripper replied, stepping into the house. His mother shut the door behind him. She pursed her lips.

                  "He's rather cross with you," she said.

                  Ripper rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah."

                  His mother's left eyebrow arched. "Has he good reason?"

                  "Oh, he's got a reason," Ripper answered, "but not a good one."

                  His mother's face softened into a smile. "Would you like some tea, then?"

                  "Nah. I'm all right."

                  She patted his cheek. "It's good to see you."

                  Ripper grinned sheepishly at her. "You too."

                  He followed her into the parlor with talk of what seemed like trivial things---his aunt's new spaniel, her bridge game, that actor fellow running for president in America---and he wondered what it must be like for her, living with the vast black hole of his father's career. His mother never spoke of the Council, in public or, as far as Ripper knew, in private. She expressed no curiosity about it, either, just waited patiently for the essential details and trusted that her husband would see to it that the family remained safe. He supposed it would be the same if Mortimer Giles had worked for MI6 or something like a normal person, but had difficulty himself not speaking of such a huge part of all of their lives. Ripper was thankful there would never be those secrets between him and Jack.

                  Supper was surprisingly civilized. They ate formally, Ripper seated between his parents at the long side of a table built for 16. Although the curtains were open to the faltering daylight, his mother had candles lit nonetheless, and the not-quite-finest-but-not-quite-everyday crystal on the table glittered cheerfully. Talk was of other pleasant and inane things: cricket, the theatre, a jaunt to Calais. It was only after his mother had taken a few deliberate but disinterested bites of her pudding that she rose from the table and, with a reassuring pat on her son's shoulder, excused herself from the dining room. Ripper watched her go with longing.

                  Mortimer Giles raised his napkin to dab at the corners of his mouth and then threw the cloth carelessly onto the table. Ripper kept his eyes on the closed door through which his mother had departed.

                  "Well," Mortimer said.

                  With a sigh and an internal cringe, Ripper turned to his father. The two men stared at each other for a long while, each daring the other to break.

                  Ripper broke. "If you're going to tell me to stop seeing her you can just piss off," he said.

                  Mortimer sighed at his son's lack of gentility. He reached for his teacup. "I sense," he said wearily, "that you do not fully grasp the situation, nor do you comprehend your power to change it, which is almost entirely nil." He took a long swallow and settled with satisfaction into his seat. He regarded his son with a smile Ripper wanted to hit with a cricket bat. "A Slayer has room for only two things in her life: the demons she fights and the Watchers who protect her."

                  "_Protect her?_" Ripper snorted.

                  "Our sacred duty," Mortimer added, narrowing his eyes. "You do remember that word, _duty_, don't you?"

                  "Fucking hell, Dad! I could ask you the same bloody question!" Ripper leaned menacingly toward his father. "Is it your _duty_ to hide behind a seventeen year old girl? Is it your _duty_ to cower in your library while some monster cuts her to ribbons? _Is it?_ Oh, the brave, noble Council! The saviors of mankind! You're cowards! The lot of you!"

                  "You understand _nothing_," Mortimer hissed.

                  "I understand what she's going through a damn sight better than you!"

                  "You think so?"

                  "I know so!" Ripper shouted. He jabbed at his chest with his thumb. "I'm out there with her. I've seen what she's seen, and worse besides! I learned it on the streets, not in some ancient fucking book! _I know!_"

                  Mortimer stood with such force that his chair fell over behind him. "You think you've seen _worse?_" he bellowed. "You think you know _her pain?_ Do you know, then, what it's like to have the vampires come for _your family? _Because they did, Rupert. They found her before we did. They killed her parents. They turned her baby brother. But you sit here and you presume to know what it's like for your _first kill_ to be an eight-year-old boy you love more than your own _life?_" Mortimer lunged toward his son. He pointed a condemning finger. "Your pain is a joke! Everything you saw, everything you learned in those streets was your own choice, your own bloody fault! You had an _option_, Rupert. She didn't. You shunned your duty. _She didn't!_"

                  Mortimer turned his back on his son and stormed to the door. He threw it open furiously. With one last withering glance at his son, he repeated, "You know _nothing_." And he quit the room, slamming the door behind him.

                  A few minutes later, Ripper himself left the dining room by its other door, snuck down the hall, and left the house without saying goodbye to his mother. He stood for a few minutes, blowing steam in the suddenly chill air that was the blue-white color of the streetlights of Marylebone. The block was empty and still. He could hear the grumble of traffic in the distance, and looked up the road toward nowhere in particular, slowly digesting his dinner and the great gray elephant of fact his father had thrust upon him. There was too much to be angry at. There was even more to be ashamed of. Ripper remained numb.

                  The patter of footsteps drew his attention to the near corner of the street. The figure who rounded the corner was dressed to the nines, in high-heeled, over the knee boots and, Ripper was comfortably certain, no underclothes whatsoever.

                  He smiled. "You followed me."

                  Jack crossed her arms and grinned. "It's me job. Protecting the innocent and all. Thought you might need a bit of rescuing."

                  Ripper walked up to her and slid an arm around her tiny waist. He touched her lips gently. "I'm not so innocent," he said.

                  "You're not so bad neither," she replied.

                  "I love you," he said.

                  "Then take me dancing," she whispered.

                  Mortimer Giles watched the little scene on the sidewalk from an upstairs window, peering carefully around a curtain so that he would not be seen. He heard his wife tread softly into the room. He didn't turn from the window. He didn't need to. She asked, "Must you be so hard on him, Mortimer?"

                  His son and his Slayer had rounded the corner of the street, hand in hand, and disappeared from his view. He turned to his wife and touched her cheek. "I must," he said. "I fear their lives depend on it."

                  It wasn't too far a stroll into SoHo. Ripper noticed that the pleasant, homespun nasty that had been Carnaby Street for a decade or so was giving way to a pre-packaged, plasticized sleaze that he didn't care for at all. But there was a cellar club in Wardour Street that he recalled with pleasant fuzziness, and he was pleased to discover that it was still there. The name had changed, but the atmosphere hadn't. It was still dark and dank and was perhaps the last club in London that could call itself "groovy," being marvelously free of the clutches of disco. When they entered, Jack's eyes popped with delight. She squeezed his hand and slithered out onto the dance floor without a word. Ripper admired her as he went to the bar, requesting two pints and a pack of smokes.

                  Ripper found a seat at a small table in a murky corner and watched Jack writhing to the Velvet Underground. Her arms were tangled above her head like a belly dancer's, and her hips swung in sensuous circles. She caught his eye and beckoned to him, but he shook his head, smiling, and took a long drag on his cigarette. She kept dancing. Ripper noticed that other eyes in other dark nooks were watching her as well. One pair of eyes sidled along the wall and came to a rest next to Ripper.

                  "Well, well, return of the Prodigal." 

                  Ripper knew the voice. "Roger."

                  Roger slid into the seat next to him. "Ripper. Where've you been?"

                  "Around," Ripper shrugged. "You?"

                  "Same," Roger agreed. He took a pull at his whisky. He jerked his chin toward Jack. "That's quite a bit of fancy there. She with you?"

                  Ripper grinned, "Yeah. Gotta warn you, though, mate, call her a bit of anything to her face and she'll hand you your liver in a jar."

                  "Joke's on her then," Roger chuckled. "Haven't got a liver." The demon's red, cat-pupiled eyes glinted merrily. 

                  "Still," Ripper said with a grin.

                  "Duly noted," Roger nodded. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his marginally-longer-than-would-seem-quite-natural legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. His eyes were on the dance floor, but his attention was on Ripper. "I should probably ask, though, given your history around here: are you looking for a demon to worship or to execute?"

                  "Neither," Ripper said. "Just looking for a good time with my best girl."

                  "Cheers to that," Roger said, and he and Ripper clinked their glasses solemnly. Then they both settled back and watched the dancing girl.

                  Jack kept dancing on the sidewalk, on the Tube, on the train, all the way back to Oxford. She was charmingly pissed and kept forgetting what she was saying in the middle of things. She kept giggling at words like "tobacconist" and "Wellington." In the middle of Gloucester Green, Ripper picked her up, not because she was too drunk to walk but simply because she let him, and carried her over his shoulders. His knees buckled as they lurched into George Street and they tumbled to the sidewalk in a fit of laughter. 

                  "Get up, silly cow," he said, and grabbed her hands.

                  "Make me!" she cried, and yanked him forward. He landed on top of her, and they both burst into laughter again. Jack kissed him then, happily, like she hadn't since that first night, and Ripper kissed her back, and her hand was down his trousers, and he gladly would have taken her right there except for the strange, distant sound that tugged at his ears like a duty forgotten, a task unfinished. He untangled himself and sat up. He listened.

                  Ripper put out a steadying hand for Jack as she used his body to drag herself off the sidewalk into a sitting position. Then she squinted and followed his gaze down George Street. "What is it?" she asked.

                  He put a finger to her lips to quiet her. She cocked her head. There was a faint echo of music in the restless street, beneath the sound of footsteps, cars, and pub chatter. Ripper scrambled to his feet and hoisted Jack up after. "D'you hear that?" he asked.

                  She squinted. "That's Brahms, that," she said. He looked askance at her. "Well it is," she shrugged.

                  "Where's it coming from?"

                  "The Apollo, maybe?"

                  Ripper hurried down the street toward the Apollo Theater, and sure enough, the music grew faintly louder. He looked at the posters outside, announcing an evening of chamber music by the Coventry Consort. He looked at Jack, who had come up beside him, teetering in her fancy boots.

                  Of the three fatalities from their mysterious, student-juicing demon, the first two, Charlie and a flautist named Bethany Weakes, had been members of the same student symphony. Like those victims, those of the unidentified Ukrainian demon had also been musicians. But the third Balliol casualty, an Ian MacInnes, was reading chemistry, so Ripper had dismissed the connection. Now, however, as the violins strained to reach his ears, he thought of another way all of these poor souls might be linked.

                  Jack raised her eyebrows. She swayed.

                  Ripper picked her up again. "Quite enough falling over for one night, I think," he said, and carried her back to his rooms.

                  He let Jack sleep in a bit, but woke her in time to get the last servings of breakfast in the dining hall. Over beans, eggs, and toast, Ripper proposed his theory.

                  "We've got a assortment of musicians," he began, "and one poor spotty sod who as far as anyone knows was tone deaf."

                  "Aye," Jack agreed, munching patiently.

                  "So it can't be some demon who's peckish for a bit of good oboist, yeah? It's not what the victim _does._ But, statistically speaking, it's still got to be about music somehow."

                  "If you say so," she shrugged. "What'dya think, then? Something they all touched, or saw, or...."

                  "Or _heard,_" Ripper said with a grin.

                  Later, Ripper led her out across the quad into a leafy corner where two buildings met.

                  "This is where the chemist was found, right?"

                  "Still some bits of him over there," Jack replied, indicating a small, red smudge on the wall.

                  "Right then. Stand here a bit."

                  He entered the building on the south corner and took the stairs two at a time. On the top floor, he ran his finger along the wall, checking the names on the doors, until he found the one he wanted. _Prof. Dr. S. V. Rossnikov._

                  "Hullo, Harold," he whispered, and knocked lightly on the door. When there was no response, he tested the doorknob, which was locked. He pulled two stiff bits of wire from his pocket and, kneeling, began to work on the lock.

                  In half a minute, he was inside. He took a quick glance around to confirm that he was quite alone. The rooms resembled the rooms of every other don. It was a chaos of paperwork, in this case with a few string instruments and batons scattered about. It reeked of dark Turkish cigarettes and stale coffee. Ripper scampered over the mess and threw open the window. Quietly, he said, "Hey, Jack."

                  Jack, still on the path three stories below, started and looked around. "Rip?"

                  "I'm over here."

                  "Where?"

                  "Look up."

                  Jack looked, and her eyes grew wide. "How the bloody hell'd'you do that?"

                  Ripper pointed to the corner where the buildings met. "Quirk of the architecture," he explained, barely raising his voice over a whisper. "Sound gets reflected by that bit there and concentrated down where you're standing. Somebody makes a noise up here, you hear it clear as day down there. C'mon up." He slid the window closed and started picking carefully through the muddle of papers.

                  Jack joined him a moment later. "Whose rooms are these?"

                  "They belong," Ripper said, handing her a stack of papers, "to Charlie's tutor, Professor Rossnikov. I told Charlie he should pinch a bit of this music. Twelve hours later, he's dead. I'd wager the same thing happened to Bethany. They stole the music, they played the music, and something nasty heard them. The chemist must've heard Rossnikov playing; he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And fancy this," he added with a wink. "I checked with Porter this morning while you were still asleep. Rossnikov's from the Ukraine."

                  "And the sound?"

                  "Hmm?"

                  She folded her arms across her chest, crushing papers beneath her armpit. "How'd you know about the sound being reflected down there?"

                  "Oh that," Ripper said, scratching his head. "Was a history prof used to have these rooms. He was the student-shagging sort. If we thought he had a girl up there, we'd---"

                  Ripper stopped. He could feel himself blushing.

                  "You'd...?" Jack asked with a smirk.

                  Ripper turned away, grinning sheepishly.

                  "Cheeky monkey," Jack muttered. "So whatever _other_ sort of noises this Rossnikov fellow is making, you think that's what's killing people."

                  "It's his music, I'm sure of it," Ripper said, and waved a bunch of papers triumphantly. "This music."

                  Jack's eyes widened suddenly. She thrust the papers into his hands. "Quick, put these back!"

                  "What---"

                  "Professor Rossnikov?" she asked brightly, turning to the door.

                  And there he was.

                  He was not particularly tall, or particularly broad, or particularly anything else for that matter, but his presence filled the room like a hundred shrieking ravens, and Ripper thought himself looking into the mouth of his own doom.

                  "Yessssssss...?" Rossnikov said. His black eyes beneath their beetle brows narrowed at Jack.

                  "Good morning, sir. Me name's Jacqueline MacGonnagal. This is Rupert Giles. We're...well, we were friends of Charlie Morgan. I understand you were his tutor."

                  "Yessssssssssss," the man said again. Ripper tried not to shudder.

                  "We just thought you should know. There's a bit of a do for Charlie tonight. An Irish wake of sorts...." Jack trailed off and looked at the floor sadly. Ripper marveled at how smoothly she lied, how easily this false face came to her. She collected herself (seemed to, Ripper corrected) and continued, "We'll be at the Bird and Baby tonight, around half seven, if you'd like to join us."

                  Rossnikov coughed. Jack grabbed Ripper's hand.

                  "See you later, then," she said, and pulled him past the don and out of the room. The walls shuddered as the door slammed behind them. Ripper heaved a sigh.

                  "You're a very clever girl," he said, "and I adore you for it."

                  Jack snorted. "Did you manage to nick a bit of it?"

                  "Yeah," Ripper answered, patting his back pocket, where a single crumbled piece of sheet music crackled at his touch.

                  They slipped into the stairwell. "Right. Give it here. I'll call your dad."

                  "_What?_" Ripper stopped on the top step, looking with disbelief at Jack's outstretched hand. "What'd'you want to bloody call _him _for?"

                  "Well, _I_ don't know what that music does, do _you?_"

                  "No, but---"

                  "Well, then, we'll need to find somebody who can analyze it." She started down the staircase. "Maybe they'll know something about that thing upstairs as well."

                  "Thing?"

                  "Rossnikov."

                  "_Rossnikov?_" Ripper was beginning to feel like a parrot. "Are you saying he's not human?"

                  "Honestly, Ripper," she said with exasperation, "if _that_ was a human, then _I'm_ a plate of Spotted Dick." And she stomped away down the stairs.

                  The tin-can echoes and raw meat smells of the Covered Market were soothing to no one's nerves. Jack and Ripper sat at a high table in the sandwich shop near the Turl Street end, staying as physically far from each other as possible without being at separate tables. Jack had not touched her sandwich. Ripper had ripped his into tiny shreds while consuming almost nothing. There was a hillock of lettuce and remnants of bread where an edible meal had once been. Over the market din, they could just hear the city's many bells strike four. They waited.

                  Mortimer Giles arrived, finally, at a quarter past, with Travers in tow. Ripper's father looked around the Market, crowded with local shoppers and tourists in University t-shirts, and pursed his lips in disapproval. The two men looked like a puddle of Bond Street in a field of Oxfam. Travers looked as though the smell were bothering him, except that Ripper knew he always looked like that. They took their places, haughtily, at the little Formica table. Slayer and Watcher's son presented their case. Evidence exchanged hands. Notes were taken. Mortimer, silent for the most part, observed it all over the top of his spectacles, grunting and nodding where appropriate, until Jack asked, "What'd'you think, then?"

                  Mortimer did not shift his gaze from Travers' notes nor his chin from his hand as he said, "We believe we have an idea what it may be."

                  Ripper raised his eyebrows but stopped himself from expressing his doubt. He knew his candor would be less than beneficial to the cause.

                  "Rossnikov?" Jack asked.

                  "No," Mortimer replied. He looked grimly over his glasses at Jack. "Like you, we had heard tell of the Ukrainian incidents. There were others as well, across most of the Eastern Bloc, in large cities, mostly. Cultural centers, you see. Some of the bodies...the remains, I should say, were examined by our colleagues abroad. They drew some...unusual conclusions. Nevertheless, this connection to Rossnikov would appear to corroborate them." Mortimer removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "We suspect that the music _is_ the demon."

                  Jack and Ripper both shifted uncomfortably in their hard wooden chairs and tried to glance at each other surreptitiously. _He's mad,_ Ripper's eyes said to her. _Aye_, hers replied.

                  "I said they were unusual," Mortimer sighed.

                  "Sir," Jack ventured, "I don't quite understand."

                  "The theory behind it draws from the realm of quantum physics," Travers explained, primly brushing a few crumbs from his cuff. "But of course, neither of you have been reading physics here, have you? Not really the place for it." Ripper glared at him. Travers was a Cambridge man. Mortimer flashed Travers a look, and Travers continued, more sheepishly. "You have heard, I would imagine, of the wave-particle theory of light?" Jack and Ripper blinked at him. He sighed wearily, "Yes, well, it's been something of a topic among the learned for the past two hundred years or so. For a very long time, it was believed that light traveled in particles, little packets of energy called photons. You've heard of photons?"

                  Ripper opened his mouth. Jack kicked him under the table. "Go on," she said to Travers.

                  Travers reached across the table for Ripper's tea. He picked up the plastic fork from Ripper's napkin. "Sometimes light acts as though it is made of particles. It can be bent by gravity and so forth, implying that it has mass. Sometimes, however, light behaves as a wave." By way of illustration, he tapped the tea with the tip of the fork, sending ripples through the liquid. Then he slid tines through the surface of the drink. "The wave, you see, passes through and then widens after the gaps, as does light through, say, a crack under the door. Particles wouldn't do that."

                  "So light's a wave?" Ripper asked impatiently, and moved his leg out of Jack's trajectory. 

                  "It's both," Travers sniffed.

                  "Of course," Ripper muttered.

                  "And so is everything else," Travers said, adding hastily, "according to the theory. In some sense, the most mathematical, abstract sense, every particle, every proton, neutron, electron in the universe can be interpreted as a wave."

                  "And according to our colleagues' theory," Mortimer interrupted, for even he was looking fed up with his assistant's performance, "this demon exists primarily as sound waves." He tapped the stray scrap of sheet music that lay on the table. "These waves. When the music is played, the demon can manifest as that wave and it can feed. If it is played by an orchestra---"

                  "It becomes a horde," Ripper breathed.

                  "It becomes particles," his father corrected. "Solid matter."

                  They fell silent, each staring down the barrel of his or her own nightmare, while the ignorant crowds swirled and shuffled around them. Finally, while fiddling with her teacup, Jack asked, "How do...do I kill it, then?"

                  "We burn the music," Ripper said quickly. "Every copy. Destroy it."

                  "Those are not our orders," Travers sniffed.

                  "We kill Rossnikov, then?" Ripper asked. For the first time, his father met his eyes. For a moment, Ripper thought he saw something like fear in them. Then his eyes flickered away. He twisted his neck, tugging fitfully at his tie.

                  "We allow the demon to manifest, and then the Slayer must find a way to destroy it," he said.

                  "You're off your bloody head!" Ripper shouted. 

                  Jack grabbed his arm. "Rip, please---"

                  "What _possible _reason---"

                  "To prevent it from manifesting again," Mortimer said sharply. Ripper frowned. His father explained, "If we simply destroy the manuscript the song could be rediscovered, rewritten, replayed. If we allow it to manifest and we kill its physical body, we render the tune harmless thereafter."

                  Ripper struggled to object to this, but the vision of Charlie---what had been Charlie---rendered all arguments futile. This...thing had to be put down. Ripper glanced up at Jack. Her face was blank.

                  "This music is scheduled for performance when?" Mortimer asked her.

                  "Friday," she responded.

                  Mortimer stood. Travers and Jack followed suit. Ripper remained seated. "We will let you know, Jacqueline, if we discover anything further about this demon's capabilities or vulnerabilities."

                  She nodded. Travers and Mortimer turned to go.

                  "Dad," Ripper said suddenly, glancing warily toward Jack. His father turned to him. "Can I speak with you alone a moment?"

                  Mortimer's eyebrows drifted upward. "Of course," he said, and held out a hand in the direction of the Market exit.

                  Ripper and his father stepped alone out onto High Street. Ripper squinted at the dim sun. It had been a gloriously un-English spring, with heaps of sunshine and scarcely a cloud to be seen. This morning, it had begun clouding up again. Mortimer shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his topcoat and waited for his son to speak. He seemed engrossed in Brasenose's architecture.

                  "Look, Dad...," Ripper began. His father did not look at him. He continued. "Is there...is there anyone else who can do this? Besides Jack, I mean?"

                  "Besides the Slayer?" his father replied, with a derisive snort.

                  Ripper chewed his lip and considered his words carefully. He also, briefly, considered punching his father in the nose. Instead, he said, "I don't think she's quite up to it."

                  Mortimer cast a darting glance at his son, then up at the clouds. "I assure you, she is the best-prepared person on earth for the job. A Slayer's training is extensive and thorough. She's well equipped."

                  "I don't mean that," Ripper explained. "I mean...I don't think her heart's in it."

                  Slowly, Mortimer's eyes drifted back in his son's direction. "You doubt her enthusiasm?"

                  "I doubt her...her...." Ripper grappled for the word. There was no word for the darkness in her eyes, the desperation in her kisses, the tearstains he found on her sleeping face in the mornings. "There's something broken inside of her, Dad. Something...something on its last legs. I can't explain it, but...."

                  "But she's dying," Mortimer said quietly. Ripper looked at him, startled. "I already knew that, Rupert. I've known it for some time."

                  Mortimer moved slowly down the High, past Brasenose's gate. Ripper followed him, puzzled. He continued. "No one who knows the things that a Slayer must know, whose seen the things she's seen, can remain whole. The horrors, Rupert. The things you and I have only glimpsed. The blood...." He stopped again and regarded his son earnestly. "Jacqueline was damaged before we found her. She never really had a chance against the...the sorrow such a life begets."

                  Mortimer's mouth twisted, and his eyes shone in the dim light. He looked away again, but Ripper, finally, really _saw_ his father. The old man was in agony. Ripper clutched desperately at the hope.

                  "You can give her a chance, Dad," Ripper pleaded. "Don't make her do this. Send someone else. Send me, for Christ's sake! Send anyone. Just...give her a sodding _break_, Dad."

                  Despite the threat of tears, Mortimer's lips twitched at the corner. It was not quite a smile, but perhaps the seed of one. "You've come to care for her?" he asked.

                  Ripper's throat grew tight, but he managed to whisper, "I love her, Dad. I do."

                  Mortimer began to chuckle. "Well, that seals it. If there's one thing in this world I can rely upon, it's the lengths my own son, and, it seems, my Slayer, would go to just to cheese me off."

                  Ripper blinked. "Pardon?"

                  He grinned at his son. "When you left the Council, you were told to have no contact with its members or agents. No contact of any sort."

                  "Yes."

                  "And I told you, specifically, to stay away from her. She was told the same."

                  "But we didn't listen."

                  The Watcher patted Ripper on the shoulder. "No," he smiled. "You didn't." He turned and started back up the High Street toward his car. He began to whistle carelessly, then to sing, "_Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow. Try to remember the kind of September when grass was green and grain was yellow...._"

                  Ripper stared, open mouthed, at his father's departing back and muttered, "You right bastard."

                  Ripper stood at the back of the darkened Sheldonian Theatre and felt a rivulet of cold sweat trickle down his spine. When the posts had been doled out, he had been stuck in the balcony with a crossbow, and he didn't like it. Not one bit. 

                  He had the sneaking suspicion that he'd been put up there to keep him out of harm's way.

                  He scanned the shadows for Jack, but the lights from the stage threw the rest of the area into blackness. He could hear the hum of the chatting audience, innocent fools that they were, his father's cannon fodder. He glanced at his watch: five 'til eight. Soon, the curtains would rise, the crowd would hush, the music would begin, and everything would go to hell.

                  The battle plan had been drawn up around Rossnikov, since they had, finally, determined what he was. Ripper had managed to snap a picture of him from across the quadrangle, and the Council had found him in their endless book of demon mug shots. He was one of a race called the Minstrasa. Heretofore they had only been known for eating the heads off livestock and for being avid---even rabid---musicians. Now it was clear what all of that composing was about. They were looking for the proper spell to call down their god.

                  Rossnikov had found it.

                  The house lights were flashing now between dim and slightly dimmer, and Ripper tightened his grip on his weapon. The lights faded out for the last time, and he watched the curtain ascend.

                  The stage was dark. Then a pencil light appeared from seeming nowhere and glinted off of something silver toward the front of the stage. It hovered. Then it swung.

                  The sound was like a buzzing at first, a low insect hum that surged and fell with the point of silver light (a baton tip, Ripper realized). It was a long time before it began to sound like music, discordant and minor-keyed, but music nonetheless. There was some sort of low, bass rumble at the bottom off it, a note that shook Ripper through the soles of his feet, up through his knees and into his gut. At the same time, the high shriek of the violins tore down his auditory nerve. But it was the middle notes, soothing, almost sensual, like someone's arms wrapping around him, caressing him, that rang the alarm bells in his head. This music, this noise, it was trying to seduce him. He covered his ears and tried to focus on the shifting objects in the dim theatre. Something, not just bow arms and brass stops, was moving down there. 

                  It was toward the end of the first movement that someone screamed.

                  The scream ended almost before it began, and the unaware (who comprised most of the audience) might have taken it for part of the piece. Ripper did not, and he brought the crossbow to his shoulder and looked for he knew not what darkness below.

                  Finally, he spotted Jack. She was moving swiftly up the left-side aisle. Ripper had to blink to clear his eyes, because it seemed as though she were appearing and disappearing as she moved. Then he had one of those strange, vertigo moments where the world seems to shift on its axis, and he could see the dark, barely formed arms of the creature that Jack was running beneath. It spanned the width of the theatre, and had more limbs than Ripper could count. Those were the only features that were clear to him. Ripper strained for glimpses of Jack beneath it, while struggling for an idea of its features, of what vulnerable spots it might have.

                  Jack drew a sword as she ran. In her left hand was a dagger. Brandishing both weapons, she disappeared beneath the mass of the leviathan, and within seconds a blood-curdling, inhuman scream rattled the walls of the theatre. That was the audience's cue to panic. Ripper caught glimpses of his father and the other Watchers trying to focus the flow of frightened people toward the doors and keep them from trampling each other. Ripper felt the press of bodies around him, the great _whoosh_ of air as they fled, but he stood his ground, looked through the sight of his weapon, and began to pray.

                  He was so busy looking out for a glimpse of Jack that he almost missed Rossnikov as he shot, howling, down the aisle toward her. Abandoning any shred of the Zen calm he had been trying to maintain, Ripper turned his weapon on the demon and shot, one after the other, a half a dozen bolts into it. He heard himself roaring as he did it. Rossnikov took swift notice and, with a furious glance at Ripper, leapt into the air and came sailing toward the balcony, arms outstretched like some mad martyr. Two more bolts, and Rossnikov tumbled from the air and disappeared into the darkness below. Ripper looked immediately for Jack. He couldn't see her, but he could hear her grunts and the ghastly wet thuds and clanks of her assault on it.

                  And then, another sound: a child's voice.

                  "Jackie!" it wailed.

                  The room grew still.

                  "Jackie?"

                  "...Mickey...?"

                  It was Jack's voice that answered the cry, small and breathless in the silence.

                  "I'm hungry, Jackie...."

                  "...no...."

                  "Jacqueline! _Do not listen_!" Mortimer Giles' voice rang against the vaulted ceiling, full of fury, and of fear.

                  The monster shifted, and Ripper could see Jack now, on her knees in its shadow, weapons discarded, eyes full of tears. "Mickey, no...." she sobbed.

                  "It is not your brother, Jacqueline!" Mortimer hollered. "It is a trick!"

                  _Oh hell_, Ripper thought. The thing. It knew. Somehow it knew. Creature of sound, it knew the only noise that could terrify her, stop her in her tracks, render her powerless: her brother's demon voice.

                  "_Jackie_!" It was a shriek this time, fear and fury and hunger all at once, and Jack fell forward, weeping.

                  Ripper took aim.

                  "_Oi_!" he shouted. "_Beastie_!_ Over here_!" And he let the bolt fly.

                  Ripper couldn't tell what part of the monster he'd hit, but it seemed to be a tender one, because it reared onto some of its limbs, throwing its others into the air, and Ripper shot again, aiming for the same spot.

                  "_C'mon, you great lummox_!" he hollered. "_Come try a piece of me_!"

                  Ripper could just make out his father's shouts of protest beneath the sound that rolled toward him like a tidal wave. It was the sound he knew he'd hear. He gritted his teeth as it rattled in his ear.

                  "_Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiipper...,_" it hissed.

                  "You're not real," Ripper whispered.

                  "You _ran away _from me, Ripper. You got _away_, and with _all of your limbs_. I didn't _like _that. I didn't _like _what you did to me, _Ripper_...."

                  Eyghon's voice curled around his spine like a chain of ice, but Ripper repeated, "You're not real. You're not bloody real." And he raised his crossbow toward what _was_ real, the monster oozing toward him across the shrinking room. His hands trembled. "You're not real," he said loudly.

                  "Are you _sure_?" Eyghon chuckled.

                  Ripper felt the weapon fall from his hands as he backed up the balcony aisle away from the voice. The voice followed him.

                  "I tell you what, Ripper old thing," Eyghon said smoothly. "How about you let me have that pretty ginger bit down there, and maybe I'll let you go...."

                  "_NO_!" Ripper bellowed, and lunged for the hovering monster. Rage blinded him as his fingers sank into the gooey, putrid flesh of the thing that wanted to destroy Jack. He would not allow it. He would die first. He tore at the creature, and it screamed.

                  But it was not he who had caused the screaming.

                  The creature threw him off with barely a swat and sent him sprawling up the aisle. It surged toward the ceiling again and then flew downward, still screeching. Ripper scrambled to his feet and rushed the balcony rail. He nearly stumbled over it trying to see what was going on below. "Jack!" he cried.__

                  Jack was attacking the thing now, blades spinning rapidly in silver streaks. Ripper ran for the staircase.

                  By the time he tumbled through the doors, the creature lay dead at Jack's feet.

                  The Watchers, his father included, stood frozen in their places, wearing expressions of horror. Whether this in response to the monster or the girl, Ripper could not say. Nor did he care. He ran for her, tripping over demon parts, and finally stumbling up and embracing her fiercely.

                  The swords fell from her hands. She did not return his embrace.

                  "Are you all right?" he asked desperately.

                  Jack did not answer for a long time. When she did, her voice was hoarse. "I'm tired," she said.

                  Ripper sighed with relief and kissed the top of her head. "We'll get you home. Let them clean up the bloody mess. You and me, we'll go to sleep. We'll go to sleep for days."

                  Jack stood terribly still. "No," she said quietly. "I mean, I'm _tired_."

                  Ripper knew, the moment he woke, that it had happened. It was not because of the cold space beside him in the bed. It was the rain. It hadn't rained all spring, but now, it was pouring. He sat at the window most of the day, watching the rain come down, probing the edges of the hole inside of him, thinking useless thoughts, regrets, should-haves. 

                  When the paper had arrived at his doorstep, he picked it up dutifully, and felt no shock at the headline that read:

**_Another Balliol Student Found Slain  
_**_Early this morning, the body of an as-yet-unnamed  
female was found in the Oxford Botanic Gardens, her body   
secreted among the rose bushes in the outer gardens. The   
victim, whom the police say was a first-year, was the fourth   
Balliol student to die under mysterious and violent   
circumstances this term.  
The police have named no suspects, nor will they  
offer an opinion as to whether this crime is related to  
the other student deaths.  
At this time, the cause of death is believed to be  
massive haemorrhage from several puncture wounds   
to major arteries in the victim's neck, inner arm,  
and thigh.   
There were no signs of a struggle._

                  Ripper sat and watched the rain falling well into the night.

                  He bought flowers before getting on the train, and he realized that he had never bought her flowers while she was still alive.

                  The ride to Durham was a long one. Ripper had to take the train down to London, the Tube over to King's Cross, and another train north. His father had offered to drive him. Ripper had refused. Mortimer had not pressed him.

                  The old cathedral above the city looked, to Ripper, like a flat from an old play. He headed for it with the same stoic numbness that he had worn all day. She had walked these streets once. She had killed here. She had danced here.

                  Ripper saw his father, in his impeccable black raincoat, standing beside the coffin that was suspended over the open grave. The only other living souls in sight were a priest, an altar boy, and a gravedigger, who leaned impatiently on his shovel and squinted ill-temperedly at the falling mist.

                  The ceremony was short and meaningless. Ripper watched the priest's lips move. He watched them lower Jack into the ground. He stood, beside his father, and they watched the gravedigger cover her with earth.

                  Finally, the gravedigger hobbled away. They stood alone at the graveside.

                  "I was too late," Mortimer said. Ripper, finally, looked at his father. The old man's eyes shone. "My plan. My elaborate plan. It was just too late."

                  Ripper said nothing. He turned his eyes back to the disturbed ground.

                  "I knew," Mortimer continued, "that I couldn't save either of you. But I thought...I hoped that you could save each other."

                  The old man made a strangled noise in his throat and fell silent.

                  "It wasn't enough," Ripper said finally. "I wasn't enough for her."

                  He looked up at the gray sky. "Next time," he swore, "I will be."


	2. Epilogue, if you dare...

_Sunnydale, California, 22 Years Later_

            "Giles?" Dawn asked sheepishly. Giles snapped abruptly out of his memories and turned to see her sad little face. Her eyes were enormous. There were shadows beneath them. She held a cardboard box in her hands.

            "Where do I put this?" she asked.

            "I'll take it," he said, and took the burden from her hands. He placed the box carefully onto a pile of its siblings, which waited, Babel-like, by the door. His flat was nearly down to the bare walls. All of his things, ready for storage or shipping. Only his bed and his dining table lingered among the half-filled boxes. It was the end of an era. The end of a life. And Giles looked at his Slayer's---his former Slayer's---little sister, and he felt nothing, felt numb. 

            Dawn stood in the midst of the debris, hands stuffed into her pockets, helpless, useless. She glanced at the objects that were scattered across the table. Idly, she picked one up. "Is this you?" she asked.

            Giles knew just which photograph she must be holding. It would have to be _that_ one, the very one he'd been staring at himself. "Yes," he said.

            "Who's the girl with you?"

            "That's...um...." Giles began, but as he did Spike came stampeding down the stairs from the loft.

            "All cleaned out up there," he said.

            Giles looked at him wearily and said nothing.

            "You're welcome," Spike snorted, and turned to Dawn. "Whatcha got there, Bit?" he asked, and plucked the picture from her hand. He looked at it.

            "Well, well, Rupert," he chuckled. "Who's the bird? Or can't you say in front of the Nibblet?"

            "Hey," Dawn protested.

            Giles snatched the picture from Spike's hand and tossed it back onto the table, surprised that he could feel something after all: fury. _Him and his mad tart of a girlfriend.... _He pushed past them into the kitchen.

            "She looks familiar," Spike continued. "Do I know her?"

            "You do," Giles growled. Spike's eyebrows shot up at his tone. Giles whirled and, over the tops of his spectacles, glared hard at him. "Oxford. Would have been '78 or '79." He added coldly, "Her name was Jack."

            Spike's smarmy grin disappeared, and, if it were possible, his face grew even paler. "Oh," he said quietly. "You, uh...knew her, then."

            Giles turned away and busied himself with the teakettle. "My father was her Watcher," he said. "I knew her. Very well."

            Dawn looked, wide-eyed, from one man to the other. "She was---was a Slayer?" she stammered. "Spike, you didn't---"

            "No," Spike insisted. "I didn't. Giles, it wasn't me."

            "I know," Giles choked. The terrible hole inside was yawning, yawning.... "You were hardly the half of it," he said, and dropped the kettle into the sink. His eyes burned. He moved swiftly for the door, muttering, "Excuse me...."

            Dawn watched her sister's Watcher hurry out the door and jumped a little as it slammed behind him. In the prickly silence that followed, she searched around the minefield of her head for something to say. Finally, she said, "He's...done this before."

            "I don't expect that makes it easier," Spike observed quietly, and picked up the picture again. Dawn came up beside him and, leaning close, cheek brushing his shoulder for cold comfort, looked at the photo in his hand. 

            "She's pretty," she said.

            "Yeah."

            "She looks a little like---" she began, and caught herself. Spike reached up and stroked her hair absently, as if to say it was all right, which, of course, it wasn't. He continued to stare at the picture, brow furrowed, chewing the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. Dawn watched him for a while, then asked, "What is it?"

            Spike glanced at Dawn, then at the door through which Giles had departed. His frown deepened. "I don't..." he began, then turned to the picture again. "I don't think that's why I remember her...."


End file.
